


As Good As His Word

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-07-27 18:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20050630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: No one asks Wade to make promises -- except Nate, so for him, at least, Wade makes an effort to follow through.





	1. That Was Then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scaresandcrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaresandcrows/gifts).

> This fic is absolutely not going to be a happy place, please for the love of everything read the tags and don't read if you don't like sad, angsty, all-hurt-no-comfort bullshit.

A lot of people refuse to trust Wade with important things, and really, he figures that's fair. For a variety of reasons, he's now got the attention span of the fictionalized goldfish (three seconds or until the next shiny-cool-fun thing passes in front of him, whichever is sooner) and a memory like a beat-to-shit sieve. Most of that's not his fault, though it would be fair to say that he doesn't put a lot of effort into self improvement in either arena. 

In any arena, really.

Nate's always been different. From the very first moment they saw each other, murder in Nate's eyes and determination to keep the kid from getting killed in Wade's, Nate has been different. Nate had no idea who he was, had no frame of reference for him before he'd been turned into to world's nastiest piece of ABC gum; all Nate had seen was a man, powers locked behind an inhibitor collar, willingly getting in his way. And he hadn't pulled any punches.

Wade had appreciated it, and he'd appreciated it later, when they were on the same side, and Nate understood a little better -- that he was nuts, and unkillable, and thirteen discreet kinds of obnoxious. He'd understood and he'd still looked at Wade as a human being, baby legs and all, and trusted him to help him put the Juggernaut down. Trusted him to at least try and get through to Russel, even if he didn't believe it was possible.

It was fair not to trust Wade, and Wade doesn't begrudge the people who pointedly don't ask him to look after their pets when they're out of town, or remember important details, or do the "right thing" where moral choices are concerned. But Nate saw something in him that even Wade had a hard time seeing; Nate -- again, no frame of reference, to excuse to blind himself to how gross Wade looked and how impossibly grosser he behaved -- saw someone worthwhile, worth hitching himself too.

So Wade tried more for Nate, was all it came down to. Nate asked him to promise things and Wade did his level best to keep those promises because Nate only asked when it was really important. 

Usually, it's incredibly flattering. Having Mutant Jesus look at him and ask for something important to be done, personally, by Wade, because he had faith that Wade was not only capable but deserving of the responsibility? Oh, talk about your special tingles. 

This promise, Wade doesn't like. 

Nate squeezes it out of him over and over. They've been doing this for a few years now. Nate had nowhere to go and Wade found his disgusting hotel-motel-Holiday-Inn hopping habit to be the dictionary definition of pathetic. When he called Nate on it, Nate gave him a flat look as made some dry statement about mooching off an old disabled woman being hardly better, and Wade had said he could get his own place any time, he just liked having a decent roommate, and somehow that turned into him asking Nate to move in with him if he found a decent two-bedroom. The events of the second movie had only been wrapped up for three months before he and Cable were cohabiting, and Wade doesn't remember _ exactly _ how long it took before Nate pinned him to the couch and fucked his brains out the first time, but it wasn't exactly a long engagement, was the thing.

And once they were fucking, they were seeing each other naked anyway, and since they were seeing each other naked anyway, Wade decided to make it his business to learn the exact path of that sexy, nifty metal seam zippering down Nate's middle, and then one day the zipper changed, just a little, creeping over into his right shoulder blade, and Wade had pointed it out and Nate had gone weird.

That's when this promise thing started. Now it's happened too many times to count, too many frantic, post-battle checks for where the virus has encroached while Nate was distracted trying to stay alive, too many times of finding a new thread of metal biting into once-healthy skin. 

Wade likes to kiss the new places, likes the way Nate hitches and grumbles at the feeling of his mouth on him. Wade insists on liking it because the only other option is getting upset over it, and he won’t do that. Wade refuses to cry about it, refuses to make this sad, refuses to acknowledge --

"I need you to promise, Wade," Nate says gravely, pulling away, turning on the edge of the bed to sit so he's half-facing where Wade's kneeling. "It's gotta be you, Wade, you know no one else will just do it."

"Have you tried asking Logan? He's pretty murder-y and he's _ not_, in this fic at least, fucking you, so maybe he's the better option."

Nate looks sad and tired and sick with it all, and Wade hates that look, hates the guilt of it, hates the naked, desperate honesty in it. Because under everything, what he sees is that Nate is _ scared _ and Nate should never be scared, not of a virus, not like this.

"Wade, anyone else will try to... try to cure it, or control it, or manipulate it. Even Logan wouldn't just kill me without pause." Nate's human hand comes up to cup Wade's cheek, and that arm used to be all human meat, and now it's machinery to the elbow, clicking and whirring like the rest of Nate's torso. There's a patch on Nate's throat that's still skin, but a thin thread of TO is eating over his left cheek, curling under his Lite-Brite eye. "Baby, I'm not asking you to do it now. Or even all that soon. And you know, when the time comes, I won't even be me anymore, not really."

That's the real bitch of it, too. Nate's told Wade all about what happened when the stupid, irresponsibly sexy virus gets deep enough in the brain. He says the people dying at the end don't even sound like they're screaming anymore; just the hollow, idiot shrieks of stripping gears, blood chilling coming from the howling mouths of metal constructs that used to be friends, family. It's slow, painful, eating you alive until you're insane with pain, driving you to look for another organic body to infect. The kindest thing to do to a late-stage infected individual was kill them.

And that's the promise Nate keeps dragging out of Wade. 

It feels incredibly unfair, to find someone who loves him despite having seen a hundred or more reasons not to on any given day. Hell, Domino is right fucking there for half their missions, gorgeous and cool and she never fucks up a job, not like Wade does. 

But Nate's living with Wade, Nate's trusting Wade, Nate's _ asking _ Wade.

Wade ghosts his fingers over the new growth of metal, cutting over the curve of Cable's hip, jigging to crawl down his thigh. It's only about three inches from bone to thigh, burrowing back out of sight, but it looks painful, and Nate hisses through his teeth in a decidedly un-aroused manner when Wade presses at the angry red flesh surrounding the new growth. 

Really, that's the thing that keeps getting Wade. The way Cable can't even hide how much it hurts anymore. 

Whoever it was who came up with sexy metal techno-cancer needs to be dragged out and shot, is what Wade thinks. A disease has no business looking that damn sexy when it's hurting the infected person that badly, and Wade shouldn't want to fuck the man more because he's sick, it's really a awful side of him.

"Yeah, okay. Romantic old creep, I'll murder you before you hurt anyone with your gross metal virus."

And Nate smiles at that. How fucked up is this thing they've got, years of living together, of letting themselves be rough and then gentle with each other, looking after one another, taking care of each other, fighting for and because of each other -- how fucked up is all that when Nate only smiles like this when he gets Wade to agree to be the one to take him down when the end is coming anyway?

Nate pets over his cheek, smoothing his human thumb over the waxy skin under Wade's eye, and he leans in, pulling Wade close with inexorable force that has nothing to do with fancy brain powers. The kiss is slow and sweet, and Wade lets himself be lost to it, lets himself forget to wonder how much longer they have to do this. 

He lets Nate push him down into the mattress and pin him, straddling his hips and using the big metal hand to pin both his arms over his head, kissing him until their both dizzy with it. Tonight they'll fuck slow, make it take up the bulk of the hours of dark, and then tomorrow they'll stay in and Nate will cook and Wade will find something to binge for them both, and they'll cuddle on the couch and eat home-cooked food and pretend for a minute that they're normal. That one of them isn't slowly dying, trying to save the world before he goes. That Nate hasn't coaxed a promise out of Wade, too many times to count, to kill him.

Wade arches into the kissing and gives himself up to it, knowing he's made a promise and that means he has to at least try to keep it. Because Nate trusts him like no one else does, and that has to be worth something. 

Even if he wishes to hell that it wasn't.


	2. This is Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please check the updated tags.

Good people were usually the easiest to trick. 

Good people were easy to trick because good people -- really _ good_, _ nice_, _ kind _ people -- wanted to believe the best in everyone. They gave out second chances like sweets on Halloween, they scowled and scolded and pushed away, but _ ultimately _ they wanted to think everyone, at their core, was as good as they were.

Wade is not a good person. 

He is, however, very good at fooling them.

He shows up in Westchester three days after giving Nate his last shot and sticks his nose in places it doesn’t belong around the Mansion -- almost empty, as per the usual budget restraints -- until someone asks him what the hell he thinks he’s doing. And no one would believe Wade in hysterics; Wade’s dramatics tended to be explosive but not in the snot and tears kind of way -- so he shrugged and told Negasonic he was looking for whatever hole Nate had crawled into, he’s been gone since last week.

There’s some suspicion at first, Wade knows. Scott doesn’t hide it too well, barking at Wade like he’s one of his trained virgins and getting all disgusted when Wade informs him the only Summers he wants Good Boy Points from is Nathan. That’s fine, it’s cool, it’s all perfectly dandy because it causes a brief panic and that panic is enough to tell him that under the suspicion and the glaring and the thanks-for-telling-us-now-get-lost bullshit, they all really care that no one can find Nathan.

It also proves that no one can _ find Nathan _ and that’s key.

A few weeks in, Wade lets himself cry. 

It’s okay. Crying is perfectly healthy, he’s pretty sure. Anyone catching him would assume it’s the Missing Boyfriend deal, because no one knows about the promise Nathan made him agree to.

No one knows about the promise, so no one thinks to ask if he followed through. 

Certainly no one is going to ask if he _ broke _ that promise, which means he can safely wallow in the guilt and grief all on his own, binge and purge on his own suffering until he’s hollowed out, and then go back to ‘searching’ for a man no one’s ever gonna find.

After his first two visits to check on things, he learns a new routine. Routine is good, if you remember not to let yourself follow it too much. 

He also learns what’s safe to leave behind and what’s not. The poor potted plant he put in the corner for a little colour was a definite mistake, but in an entirely different way so was leaving books. Going back and seeing them exactly where he’d left them -- seeing _ everything _ exactly where he’d left it -- that had made something in Wade choke up and go all squishy sad. 

Nathan can’t really talk anymore. He can’t do much of anything, really. Wade’s not sure he can really move at all now, though for sure when he’d tranq’d him and squirreled him away, he’d still had _ some _ mobility left. After all, Wade had left him on the mattress pad and found him -- well, _ most _of him -- wedged into the corner furthest from the door. 

Can’t talk, can’t move around. Looking at him --

The thing is, looking at him, Wade’s not sure the rest of them, the X-Babies or Domino or _ anyone _, would recognize him. Or that he’s still alive.

He breathes, and every once in a while he blinks, and the metal shit, having gone completely crazy, grows out from him like webbing, anchoring into the walls, creeping over the floor, supporting the shifting mess that the rest of Nathan’s body has become.

He’s horrifying, and looking at him, not knowing how to understand what you were seeing, it would be an easy mistake to make, to think that he’s gone. 

But when Wade says his name, his head will lift, just a little. His still-human eye, strung into the socket with threads of metal, will focus. His breathing will catch, stutter, and after a second Wade can feel that all the energy Nathan has is focused on him, like he’s the only thing in the world that matters.

That’s why thinking of him like that makes Wade cry. That it should be now, like this, that he can do something to get all that attention on him, now when the end is coming closer every day, dragging them both miserably along -- Wade hates it. Refuses to think about it. Call him a selfish asshole.

If any of the others saw Nate this way and figured out who the barely-human figure spreading across the tile floor really is, Wade wonders if they'd do what Wade can't. Would they look at him and think it's already time? 

He looks...

He looks...

Wade has a lot of sympathy for ugly things that just want to be allowed to suffer and live. Occasionally, Wade is one of the miserable creatures that really would rather just be released from his misery, but... well, the thing is, the body wants to live, even when the brain and the heart are so sick they just want to quit. If Wade, grotesque and selfish and all-around miserable as he is, is allowed to go on living, what right does he have to just end it for Nate because _ he _thinks Nate's in too much pain.

And Nate can't talk, really. He can't speak. 

The hideaway is cute, Wade thinks. Old bunker from some prepper idiot Wade had murderized pro bono when he found out the cockweasel was one of the assholes driving out into the desert to destroy supply caches for people crossing the border. Wade had wanted to tie him up out in the desert and let _ him _ dehydrate in the punishing sun, let _ him _watch his skin crack and bleed even as it burnt, but he was nicer than the whiny, gun-hoarding little puke deserved and shot him in the face instead.

His property had a few decades worth of non-perishables, a ton of cool guns, a few weeks worth of ammo, and access to this rad underground shelter. It's really just a ten by ten cell with a cubicle for the toilet off to one side and a bunch of camping equipment set up. A tall shelf in one corner serves as a pantry and there's a table and stack of mattress toppers that serve as a bed.

Nate had evidently shoved himself in the far back corner when he'd first woken up here. Wade would have thought he'd want the bedding, but Nate could be weird. That was why Wade liked him so much, he loved people who could out-weird him, and there were depressingly few. 

Every couple days, give or take depending on if Wade's busy or if he thinks anyone has been spying on him, Wade takes the trip south and finds the bunker and checks on Nate. For the most part, his condition doesn't change, and every meeting, Wade goes in thinking _ This is the last time, this has to be, I can't do this anymore. _ By the end, he's relaxed and light and happy in a way he hasn't been since Nate told him that the metal stuff was terminal. 

By the end, he almost doesn't want to leave, fantasizes about how it would be to just stay. Let himself go. Let them both go.

Now he sits outside the bunker, back to the exterior access door, trying to push himself. Last time he had to take the canned goods out. The metal shit had grown across the floor and crushed a few cans open, and the contents were gone (rats, maybe, or else something Weird going on with the metal) and so Nate had been extra worked up, thrown off the entire hangout sesh. 

The start is always the worst with any tough job. You have to just do it sometimes. Turn off the brain, make yourself move, pick a thing and do it. 

It takes another five minutes of sitting there just breathing to get him to open the door and head downstairs. He drags the heavy steel door shut behind him, locks all the locks and then barricades it with the drop bar. Wouldn't hold up to serious weaponry -- or a good optic blast or telekinetic bullshit, either -- but the effort keeps Wade calm. At the bottom of the stairs, thirteen steps into the ground, there's another heavy door he has to unlock, and then he's there. 

A month ago, the room had been warm no matter what Wade tried with the fans that came with it. Today it's cold, chilly, and Nate all bundled in the far corner looks almost like he's snuggled up in a big metal blanket. 

"Hey, Cablebox," Wade says quietly, cheer he doesn't really feel yet as he starts pulling his own shirt off. He didn't even know he could manage soft, reserved sadness like this. "Nate, baby, I missed you." 

It's so wrong. It's so wrong to see that man, to _ know _it's his man, and be consumed by that gut-deep knowledge that what he's looking at is fundamentally a threat, needs to be destroyed. He'd thought he raised himself better than this, wanting to kill the first alien virus that threatens to take someone from him. 

His shoes go next, and Nathan's watching him now. He has to hop on one foot to get his left shoe off, tied too tight to kick it off, and then go the pants. It’s cold in here without clothes, but Wade learned pretty quickly what happened if he left them on. 

Warm metal snakes around his ankle as he steps closer, and Wade feels his skin prickle, anticipatory. By the time he’s kneeling over Nate’s thighs, his legs are engulfed in metal, digging in and spreading, and more is reaching for him, unfurling like fingers open to clutch and hold. He sinks into them, chuckling at how eager Nate is, talking to cover the distressing low noise working out of Nathan’s throat as he settles himself to curl against him.

If Nate doesn’t put his arms around him, well, there’s plenty of TO up to the task. 

The TO seeks out every warm, vulnerable part of him; it sinks in and takes, starved. Wade doesn’t mind being the thing that feeds a part of Nate, he cuddles close and hums and waits.

A minute or so of shifting, stabbing agony, and then something touches his face. It’s gentle, inquisitive, but Wade knows it will bite soon enough, even as he turns his face to nuzzle against it. On some level, Nate has to have control of the TO still. He _ has _ to, or else it would tear Wade apart immediately, wouldn’t it? Hungry as it seems to be, he can’t see it not trying to race through him, get into his brain like it’s gotten --

He kisses the metal, open mouthed so he can taste it, feel it tense and shift like muscle as it seeks the wet heat of his mouth. Something else, thick and hard, is curling along his inner thigh, and he shifts his legs apart without thinking, humming as he works his tongue around the tip of the metal in his mouth. It’s amazing the things that a man could get used to, the way the idea of getting fucked raw by a hot metal tentacle is now right around the top of his Best Hits fantasies. 

And it’s a sign, isn’t it -- doesn’t it just _ have _ to be a sign, that Nate’s still in there. There’s nothing reflexive about this, about the way the TO knows his body, holds him down and gets him worked up and squirming before pushing sharp and sudden inside of him, impaling him on hot, writing metal. It’s _ good _ to him, gentler than it has to be, and Wade only cries a little bit, whimpering around his mouthful as he’s fucked open, way more metal in his body now than it probably medically advisable. 

He’s always been a size queen at heart. Feeling full of dick-adjacent tentacle from ass to throat is _ good_, even when it hurts. 

Narrow, questioning tendrils snake over his head, fingers over his scalp and clutch and hold, the biggest of them pressing sharp at the bone between his eyes. He pulls off the metal in his mouth so he can say, “Go ahead baby, put it in me.”

There’s pain, then, a hollow, sick crunch and blind, shooting agony in his head, and then, for a blissful little while, Wade’s not there at all. He can’t feel the metal tearing through his guts, filtering into his brain, slipping down his throat to spread into his chest cavity. The burn of his healing factor at war with the invasion the TO. For a short, sweet minute, Wade Wilson is free, dead in Nathan’s lap.

When his consciousness struggles back online, always so fast, he’s not really aware of his own body. Sense of self is harder when they’re tangled up like this, and Wade feels it out, this big, overwhelming space. There’s pain here, but impersonal; it’s in everything, part of the makeup of what they are; it’s like the throbbing pulse of a nightclub’s sound system heard from the room next door, shaking the walls and filling the space with muffled music he almost recognizes. 

Pain, and quieter, hunger. That’s what they are, but that’s not what Wade is looking for, and it’s -- it’s jarring, panic inducing in a way that starts dragging him toward breaking the connection early, until he finally feels it. That tiny little ball of _ Nateness _. 

Finding it, he sinks his own sense of self into it and then --

He looks worse. 

Wade doesn’t know how any of this works. When he finds Nate in that big empty both-neither-them place, it’s like suddenly being somewhere else. A quiet, dark room. The first time, the room had brightened when he saw Nate and Nate had reached back for him. Everything had been joy-relief-happy-good until Wade’s overactive healing factor fucked it up and ripped them apart again.

Every time since, Nate’s room is a little darker. There’s a sort of haze in the air, like cigarette smoke in an old timey bar scene or atmosphere for a recently blown-up building on a newer action thriller. Every time, Nate notices him slower, sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands at his side and face tense with focus. 

He looks tired, when he finally looks to Wade, and the room doesn’t brighten. But it’s there, however dulled it’s gotten -- it’s there, the relief and joy of seeing Wade. The hope. 

“Wade,” Nathan says, standing and reaching for him. The second Wade reaches back, something rips through them both, orgasmic pleasure that makes Wade -- the torn up body hosting a number of nesting TO tentacles now -- shudder, the first shocks of life returning. “Wade, you’re… you came, you’re here, where did...”

“Of course I came. Date night.” Wade says, and it feels so good, so, so _ good _to see him like this, even if the lack of TO is strange. When he gets his arms around Nate, Nate clings back, burying his face against Wade’s shoulder, fingers clutching at the skin of his back. They’re both naked and this isn’t… it’s not sexy, it’s not romantic, but it’s deeply intimate in a way Wade doesn’t know how to parse. He strokes his fingers over Nate’s back, mapping musculature he’d always known to be metal.

“There’s something wrong, Wade, there’s something,” Nate pants, and Wade realizes that the unsteadiness of his breath is something like hysteria, like he’s on the edge of tears, frightened.

Wade holds him close and squeezes, like he can get any closer. “No, sweetheart, no, it’s fine,” he says. Nate is like this sometimes, in the beginning. The first few times it had just been joy, then after that there started to be moments of fear, easy to soothe. It takes a moment of babbling but Nate relaxes against him, bit by bit, until he nuzzles his face against Wade’s neck, exhaling a shaky sigh. 

“It’s getting worse,” Nate says. “ Something’s coming and I can’t keep holding it back. I keep dreaming I’m _ hurting _ you.”

Crooning out a low sound, threading a hint of teasing into it like he’s babying Nate while he’s being silly, Wade tilts his head to press them closer. “I’m fine,” he says, and when Nate looks up at him, he kisses him to prove it. “No one’s hurt.”

Nate makes a face at that, the squinty face he makes when he thinks Wade’s bullshitting him but wants to believe him. Nate’s a good guy, easy to trick. He gives Wade another kiss, relaxing against him, trusting, comfortable. Like old times. 

Good things don’t last. Wade’s learning that lesson over and over again. It takes a while, but time doesn’t hold a lot of meaning in that big space stretched between them while Wade’s body heals. They drift away from each other and come back together several times, and when Wade is snapped back into a half healed body, he’s sprawled heavily against a snarl of metal burrowing into the tile a few inches to Nate’s right. 

Nate’s making soft, horrible noises, rhythmic and grinding, like a small engine that can’t quite start, and his face, what’s left of it, is open as if in agony as the metal shudders and crawls over him. There’s something about Wade’s brain reconstituting that always throws the TO into a fit, and that’s ultimately how he gets free of it. The longest time it lasted was the first, for all of two days. The smell had been _ horrific _ and Wade’s clothes has been bloody tatters so he’d had to dig through a racist’s wardrobe for clothes when he left. 

Wade’s clothes are right where he’d dropped them. The TO has no interest in wrecking his stuff when it’s not serving as an active barrier between it and Wade’s soft parts. It’s hard to get dressed, his body still juddering through the healing process, but Wade’s used to doing difficult things fast and well. His sweats end up smeared with blood and worse, but it’s enough for him to get out of here and back to the house to shower. 

“Gotta go to work, honey, don’t wait up,” He says, like this is funny, like it’s easy. Like he thinks there’s a chance in hell Nate can hear him when he’s like that. He bolts the door and barricades it, first the one at the bottom of the stairs, then the one at the top. Pointedly did not cry, focusing on the echos of relief and pleasure that came in knowing Nate’s still there. Still there, waiting for him.

One day, he won’t be. One day he won’t. Wade knows that, he’s not that stupid. One day Nate will be gone. 

When that happens, when he’s sure there’s no miracle chance coming their way, no more stars to reach for, Wade will do what he promised. He always does his best for Nate, always tries to keep his promises.


	3. And the Future is Always Ugly

It all goes on longer than Wade thinks it possibly could. 

It's a nightmare he can't wake up from -- and part of the horror is that, in spite of everything, he's _ glad_. He's _ relieved _when he makes it back to Nate and he's unchanged, laying there waiting for him. Part of him feels broken, anguished to see the state Nate's reduced to, remembering the warnings Nate had given him about the agony of late-stage infection, knowing on some level that what was left of Nate's nerves would be firing in constant agony. 

The majority of him is just happy he's still there, still reacting to the sound of his voice.

Six months in, Neena tells him she can't keep doing this. There's pain to the way she says it and he wants to tell her it's okay, tell her it's fine, that she was never meant to be able to find Nate. He wants, so badly, to tell her the truth, because holding all of this to himself is painful on a level he doesn't know how to deal with. It's like he's being eaten alive, it's always right on the forefront of his mind.

He tells her he doesn't need fake powers helping solve real problems, giving the old joke fresh teeth because if she thinks he's an asshole she won't feel bad enough to keep dragging herself through an impossible task. If she thinks he's just being a prick, she'll be glad to wash her hands of his endless searching for someone she can't even get a lead on.

That hurts too. Watching her go from sympathetic to affronted by him dismissing her, understanding that he's pushing the joke too hard, understanding that there's a good chance he's torching this friendship for the sake of what is essentially a haunted corpse in a Texas bunker. 

On some level, he knows it's all gone to hell. Neena tries to make excuses for him at the start of the conversation -- "I know you're hurting, so I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," she says, and then later, "You're scared for him and that's making you into a dick." -- but he's persistent. If Neena ditches the search, that's one less person who might get hurt stumbling onto the truth. 

No one else is going to bounce back if the TO gets hold of them, and Wade's pretty sure, in his more realistic moments, that if anyone sees what Nate's looking like these days, they'd shoot him before they ever realized who that huddled, shifting metal mass wedged into the corner was.

It's agonizing. It sucks. It's unending and he doesn't necessarily want it to end -- it can only end when Nate's gone, and Wade doesn't want that. He feels like he's living an ugly sort of dream, and there are days, frightening days, where he thinks he's mourning Nate before he's even dead. Days where he can't pry himself off his couch, where he lays there feeling hollow and loveless and bitter. He rouses from these self-pity sessions realizing that Nate still needs him to check in, and can hate himself anew when something like hope builds in him the closer he gets to the bunker, hope that the thing Nate asked him to do will have been done by nature before he gets there.

And then the tsunami crash of relief every time he forces himself through that second bulkhead door and Nate's still there. Still reacts, however sluggishly, to the sound of his voice, to the press of his naked body to Nate's own. Can still be found in that vast mental darkness, their brains as tangled up as their bodies as Wade comes shuddering back to life with TO punched through him like they're meant to be one body.

It's wrong. Part of him knows that, and the rest of him hates acknowledging that wrongness, but that doesn't change the fact that absolutely _ is _wrong. Nathan made him promise and he's shirking that promise because he's selfish. 

But what else can he do? How in the world can he go through with that, with putting a bullet in the head of the only remaining person to look at him, look at the irredeemable mess of him, and see more than hyper-violence and useless, jabbering insanity. Nathan accepted his bullshit even when he tried to steer him or twist him; Nathan never asked him not to kill people, never had a problem with what he did for a living, never treated him like he was a kid who needed a stern guiding hand.

Even when they fought, as bitter as the arguments could get, Nate accepted him as a person. No one else gave him that. Everyone else got sick of indulging his crazy eventually. 

And Nate's still in there. He can find him every time, even if it takes a little searching. If it was really time -- Nate had said it himself, every time he forced Wade to make the damn promise; when it's time, Nate wouldn't really be there at all.

Wade stops keeping track of time. He stops counting how many visits he's made. When snow starts sticking in New York, Wade lets himself fall off the grid, taking a job in Mexico City and then vanishing, sneaking back over the border and shaking up in the derelict house on the property with the bunker. Wintering in Texas. On hand to see Nathan any time the urge strikes. 

A nightmare he can't wake up from. He doesn't think he wants to wake up, given what waking would mean. His own anguish when he's away from Nathan is at least bandaged by the knowledge that Nate's safe and still alive. 

He thinks yanking that bandage off with Nathan's blood on his hands would gut him. His sanity is already held together with spit and wishes; he can't hurt Nate unless he's one hundred percent certain it's the right time. Not if Nate's still holding up in there somewhere.

Every time Wade goes to him, Nate responds to his presence. He reaches out for Wade, he tracks Wade when he speaks. If the dramatics of those reactions have toned themselves down, well, that's cohabiting for you. Wade's not visiting every few weeks now; he's coming down to the bunker every day. Why not, while he's laying low in the area anyway. 

He thinks Nate's picking up on the shift in the schedule. Nate's always been a demanding guy when it comes to their private life; sex, gun maintenance, general living area cleanliness -- Nate wanted what he wanted and he made damn sure Wade knew what was expected of him. Nate holding on to him tighter, making it harder to pull away when his body came shuddering back to life and he was forcibly evicted from the comfort of that huge dark space where they played their own very special version of brain footsie, that doesn't mean anything, necessarily. 

Nate wants to keep Wade longer, and since Wade's stupid healing factor seems to be getting better at rejecting the TO the more frequently Wade interacts with it, Nate's compensating by holding on tighter, dragging him in closer. 

Any day might be the last day. Wade faces that possibility every time he wakes up. 

Maybe the best thing he could do is leave. Take a job, a real job, something big and important and far away. Brazil maybe, he thinks he heard something about some fuckers burning the rain forest or something. There's always contracts open to some shit hole European country, or Russia, China maybe. Something big and quote-unquote "Important" that Wade could distract himself with and forget for a while, forget until the TO runs out of...

Until Nate's really gone. Until the job is out of Wade's hands. 

Could be that's the best option. Let it happen and then grieve when he comes back and finds...

It's not like he's going to like himself in the end either way. Why keep taking the route that hurts the worst? 

Exhaling, Wade presses his forehead against the heavy door at the bottom of the stairwell, gathering himself. He's already here. And he deserves a chance to say goodbye, even if Nate's ability to appreciate that sentiment is dubious at best. If he's going to run away from this, then let him have one more fucked up mind-cuddle with his man. 

He jerks open the door with decisive energy he doesn't really have. He feels jittery, he feels like he needs a few weeks of proper restive grief wallowing, maybe blow himself up again. He can't do that, but what he _ can _do is lay down with Nate and say goodbye one more time. 

Maybe for real this time. 

"Hey, big guy," he says, skin prickling with the urge to raise into gooseflesh, too gross and fucked-up waxy to manage it. Nate's eyes -- neither of them are human anymore, but the one that should be doesn't light up -- track Wade as he moves in close. His clothes come off quick and he tosses them toward the door, barefoot as he steps into Nate's space. 

Nothing grabs for him until he lowers himself into Nate's lap. Once he's touching, pressed close in a way that would be difficult to get back up easily from, several pieces of metal dig into his skin, sudden and sharp, holding him. It's not how Nate had been at the start of this -- no more eager feeling Wade up, no more looking for the tender spots; Nate grabs him like he's tired and he's been missing Wade, needs him to stay. 

And the fucked up thing is, despite the unutterable agony of the TO burrowing mindlessly into him, ripping through him as it tries to overwhelm his healing factor and get purchase on truly infecting him, once Wade's settled back against Nate's chest, face tucked into the strong curve of Nate's shoulder, Wade _ wants _to stay. 

There's no gentle petting this time; there hasn't been the last few times he's come down here. In the last couple days, Nate's wanted to get straight to business, and Wade respects that. He doesn't complain, though he misses the distraction of getting fucked to death; something hot and sharp bites at the back of his head and breaks through his skull with a wet crunch, and that's that. All she wrote, the end of the line, song of the fabled fat lady; Wade dies with a gurgling sigh, tears smearing from his face to the metal of Nate's shoulder.

Finding anything in that huge space between them takes a little more effort every time, and Wade's initial panic of not finding Nate's consciousness in there right away doesn't help. Panic is for individual living people, and it seems to pull him up faster whenever he lets himself feel it. 

But he's there. Nate's always there. 

Wade doesn't waste time waiting for Nate to notice him when he finds him, when they're together in that weird dim metal room together. Nate is dazed and tired, cross legged on the floor and meditating harder than Wade thought possible. His face is all hard lines of focus, cords standing out on his neck, and he doesn't relax when Wade gets on the floor with him and wraps himself around him. 

"I miss you, baby," Wade says, because it's true, and because you should always lead with the sappy stuff. All the joy, all the relief that had come from finding Nate here before -- the gut-kick of hope at seeing him entirely free of the infection that first time, the reassurance every time after that at least some part of Nate was still here, tired but healthy, refusing to give in, staying strong -- all the positive brightness of this place is swallowed in the gloom of the room, in the sweat on Nate's face, in the way he doesn't even crack an eye open to look at Wade. 

It's fine. Wade doesn't need anything but this. He just needs Nate. 

He holds him. Nate shivers in his arms like he's cold and sweats like he's never been hotter. Wade kisses his cheek and Nate sighs. He's alive. He's here. This is what matters, this is what Wade needs to remember, hold on to, preserve.

"Please, Wade," Nate breathes, eyes closed, body held so tense he feels like he might shatter. "Oh god, please. It's coming."

There's a moment of horror, hearing the words, feeling Nathan straining toward some goal, sitting in Wade's arms, dragged half into his lap, fighting for his life. In that moment, Wade thinks with sudden clarity of thought, _ I made a promise_, shot through with all the grief of trying to shirk fulfilling that promise, and the resolution to do what he said he would -- what he should have done months ago, when Nate stopped responding to words without Wade letting the TO ventilate his skull with a mind-to-mind highway.

It's only a moment, and then very suddenly, there's nothing at all. 

No Nate. No dim room. Wade's consciousness alone in a vast, alien dark, yawning around him for a few eternal seconds before Wade's thrown back into his half healed body. 

There's no screaming. No metal restlessly writhing. The only sounds are Wade's ragged breaths, his flailing as he struggles to get back into Nate's lap properly. The metal still pushed into his body pulls and slips free, wounds slowly closing as they're vacated. The TO, usually rioting when Wade comes fully back online, is utterly still.

Nate's eyes, when Wade's own have healed enough to see, are both dark. 

And that's -- that can't be. That can't be right.

Nate's name leaves Wade's throat in an ugly croak. His hands flutter and settle awkwardly on the twists and curves of metal, all perfectly still, refusing to respond no matter how many times he says Nate's name. 

"You can't, you can't," He says, choking on the words, gagging them up like vomit as he lifts one of the thicker metal wires to his forehead, pushing the bloody end against his skin until it bleeds fresh. "This isn't -- you can't go, Nate, you're, c'mon baby, you gotta -- one more time, c'mon. One more time."

Just one more time, that's all he wants. One more time with the man who loved him despite knowing better. One more time with the only person in the world who trusted him to do right by him. 

One more time to say he's sorry. 


End file.
